Strong legs

SLOW MO
Stability is considered to come from the core, but the legs are also working very hard to stabilise your movement while standing, walking and running. Conscious movement through transitions give the opportunity to add depth to our yoga practice. When we move slowly from pose to pose we recruit all the strong stabilising muscles of the body. Take the simple step forward from Ashta Chandrasana/Eight Crescent Moon to Tadasana/Mountain at the top of the mat – you can use momentum to lift and swing your leg forward, this is a cardiovascular output, or you can press strongly into your front leg, lift the back leg up and gradually draw it forward to the top of the mat as slow as you possibly can – this is a strong muscular output.

CULTIVATING STRONG LEGS
When it comes to strong legs in your practice look to build from the ground up. Press into the three points of contact with the ground – the big toe mound, the little toe mound and the centre of the back of your heel. Feel the arches of your feet lift, and the energy travel up your legs, as the muscles react to this simple action of grounding down. When the legs are strong, supportive and reactive in our everyday movement, the upper body becomes more fluid and holds less tension.

EXPLORING STRONG LEGS IN YOUR PRACTICE
As you move through this sequence concentrate your attention on the quality of your movement from pose to pose. Feel for the stabilising muscles around your joints and how the body is constantly correcting it’s balance with proprioception. See can you isolate the sensations in the muscles of the legs as you move slowly through the ‘step back’ flow. Take your time and don’t rush. You might even find that you don’t get through the full range of standing mini slow flows in one practice. If so, come back to it at your next practice, start with the warm up section and explore the next mini slow flow.

ALIGNMENT CUES
You will flow through the peak pose of Ashta Chandrasana/Eight Crescent Moon several times as you work through this sequence. This pose is a opportunity to strengthen and stretch all the muscles on of the legs in the alternate sides. In the front leg the hamstrings and glutes are being stretched, and the quads and hip flexors are being strengthened; while the hamstrings and glutes are being strengthened, and the quads and hip flexors and being stretched in the back leg. The alignment cues below will guide you through your optimal alignment for Ashta Chandrasana/Eight Crescent Moon and how to approach the first mini slow flow.

• From Adho Mukha Svanasana/Downward Dog, inhale, step your right foot between your hands, exhale here.

• Inhale, press into your feet to come up, place your hands on your pointy hip bones and lift them up to stack the pelvis.

• Press out through your left heel, lift your thigh up and firm your back leg. Squeeze the glute of your left leg to strengthen the hamstring and open the left hip flexor. Hug your outer hips strongly to the midline for balance.

• Reach your arms up high, shoulder width apart or palms together. Stack your front knee over your front ankle. Press strongly into your right foot and feel the quad working hard to keep you balanced.

• Draw your navel towards your spine, broaden through your collarbones, lengthen through your spine to the tip of your crown, gaze forward or to your fingertips.

• Exhale, lean your weight forward over your front foot. Inhale, slowly lift your left leg and draw it forward to Urdhva Hastasana/Upward Salute with a lifted leg. Pause.

• Bend your front knee and on an exhale slow as you can step back to Ashta Chandrasana/Eight Crescent Moon. Repeat three times.

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Ruth Delahunty Yogaru

Strong glutes

TIGHT & WEAK
Recently in my practice I’ve become more conscious of building a sustainable practice with longevity that will see me practicing well into my 90s’! After twenty years of a regular practice I’m starting to notice an element of overstretch in the back of my hamstrings and glutes. A phenomenon called ‘yoga butt’, which is very common in yogis with a long standing practice, where the tendons become inflamed from regular stretching and you develop tendinopathy. It doesn’t necessarily correlate with flexible muscles. Forward bends remain as the poses I find most challenging. We associate tight with strong but muscles are more often tight and weak. We are very sedentary in our day to day lives, we sit for long periods of time. This causes the muscles to become weak and tight from lack of blood flow and lack of movement. Stretching strongly into tight, weak muscles increases the chances of injuries to the connective tissue and the tendons. An athlete, or someone who has a specific regular sport discipline, may find they have certain areas that become tight and strong over time. For these people plenty of stretching in their practice will balance them out. But for the majority of us we need equal amounts of stretching and strengthening in our yoga practice.

FINDING EQUAL STRETCHING AND STRENGTHENING
The misconception about yoga is that it is all about stretching. Yes there is plenty of opportunities to stretch, but there is equal opportunities to strengthen too. To remedy my ‘yoga butt’ and make my practice more viable for the future I am consciously looking for the strength in each pose and adding poses to strengthen certain areas where I know I need more stabilisation and strength. Finding the strengthening muscles isn’t as hard as you’d imagine. To every muscle that is stretching there is a muscle that is strengthening. Think of a forward bend – the back body is in extension and stretching, while at the same time the front body is flexing and strengthening.

EXPLORING YOUR STRONG GLUTES IN YOUR PRACTICE
The glutes comprise of three muscles – gluteus maximus, gluteus medius and gluteus minimus. Glute max extends the leg back, externally rotates the leg and abducts it out to the side. Tight gluteus max limits forward bends. Glute medius and minimus are quite similar in function – they abduct the leg out to the side, internally rotate the leg and stabilise the pelvis. They are the muscles we switch on when we ‘hug to the midline’. Tight medius and minimus leads to instability in standing poses.

ALIGNMENT CUES
This sequence will give you plenty of poses which to feel the glutes working and to help you sense their position and their function in the body. The peak pose is a version of Ardha Chandra Chapasana/Half Moon Sugarcane where you will be coming into the balancing pose with the top leg bent and reaching back, and instead of holding onto the foot you will reach for the foot but not hold it. This will allow the strength of the muscles to carry the weight of the lifted leg. Particularly the glute max of the lifted leg and the glute medius and minimus of the standing leg as they work to keep you stable in this balancing pose.

• From Ardha Chandrasana, bend your left knee, reach your left hand back toward your left foot without holding onto the foot.

• Flex your foot and reach your left knee up and back, squeeze into the back of the knee.

• Hug your right hip in to the midline and press down through the three point of your right foot.

• Draw your navel to your spine and lift your pelvic floor.

• Broaden through the collarbones. Arch through your whole spine, lengthen your neck and softly reach your head back, gaze down or up.

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Ruth Delahunty Yogaru

Fabulous feet

FOOT LOVE
Love them or hate them our feet are the foundation of all movement. We carry the entire weight of our bodies on this disproportionately small surface and they rarely complain. Our feet were designed to be barefoot like our prehistoric relations. Back then the muscles of our feet would be acutely tuned to sensations from the constantly changing terrain and send feedback to your brain to allow you to move safely. Shoes have become our feets worst enemy. They numb this feedback and over support the arches of our feet, causing the complicated network of muscles to become weakened. The body is a finely tuned feat of nature, and when we intervene it inevitably throws this delicate balance and increases incidences of imbalance. For more information on the anatomy of the foot have a read of Anatomy 101 - Find your feet. If you’re interested in reconnecting with your feet your everyday movement I recommend you checkout Vivo Barefoot and have a read of Favourite finds for June for my review on Vivos.

RECONNECT TO THE EARTH
Yoga gives our feet the well needed chance to reconnect with their purpose in life and fire up those sleeping muscles again. During your practice imagine roots growing from the soles of your feet hooking into the soil and supporting you. Feel the weight of the body bound into this support and a rebound of energy coming from this strong connection. Rooting down and having a solid foundation will help you establish a supportive and stable base to grow each pose from.

EXPLORING YOUR FABULOUS FEET IN YOUR PRACTICE
Incorporating some foot stretching at the start of your practice will help you link into the sensations. Start your yoga practice in a standing position and explore the three points of each foot: the ball of the big toe, ball of the little toe and middle of the heel; and root down into them equally, while at the same time feeling a lift in the arches. When we root down into the three points, the arches natural lift into a triangular dome shape. This action is called Pada Bandha (foot energy lock) – it brings an awakening and energy to the leg muscles that travels up the entire body. Building strong and flexible feet will help you find your foundation in your yoga practice, cultivating a flow of energy from the ground up. You’ll find that when you take time to focus on the placement of your feet in standing poses the rooting-down effect will naturally help you achieve better alignment.

ALIGNMENT CUES
As you practise this sequence pay particular attention to the soles of your feet. Check their position and scan up the body to see what effect this has on your knees, hips, spine and shoulders. Our peak pose for this sequence is Utkata Konasana/Goddess. Come back to those three points in your feet and check have you got equal weight in each point. The challenge in this pose is to find the inner arch of your feet. Press strongly into your big toe mound to lift this inner arch and open the inner groin.

• From Tadasana/Mountain, hands on hips, step your left foot out into a wide stance to face the side of your mat, rotate your feet out at a 45 degree angle.

• Inhale, lift your inner thighs and lengthen up through your spine. Exhale, bend your knees and lower your hips down, stack your knees over your ankles, thighs working towards being parallel to the ground. Tailbone reaches down, hipbones reach up.

• Hands in prayer position at your heart, sternum presses into your hands and hands press into your sternum, gaze forward.

To save the images for personal use click and hold down the image until the ‘save image’ option appears; on Mac hold down ‘control’ and click the image to get the option box; on PC right click on the image to get the option box. Scroll down in the ‘option box’ and click ‘save image’.

Ruth Delahunty Yogaru